He was really…different, this Michael Scofield. He wasn't the type.
You see a lot of different people, as a tattoo artist. Teenagers, hipsters, bikers, military men, gang members…you name it, I've tattooed it. I gave a little old lady her first tattoo on her 90th birthday; a butterfly on her forearm. She told me she'd decided that if she made it to 90, she might as well go for it, since she wasn't likely to live long enough to regret it.
But although I'd seen a guy or two like him before, I'd never seen a tattoo like his with a guy like him. Suits got tattoos too…usually things like their a small symbol that meant something important to them, commemorating an important event or something like that. Always small things, though. I'd never seen a guy dressed in Armani walk in with a full shirt with sleeves before. Or since.
He'd drawn it all himself. The quality of the artwork was incredible, with so many details it made me dizzy. Usually, someone comes in with an IDEA for a personalized tattoo, not a…a complete rendering, with all the shading and details included. And even more incredibly, none of it was too small or detailed to be done with a tattoo gun. That was a miracle too; people usually overestimated the fineness of detail that could be created with skin and ink.
He'd told me I had to be finished in four months. Four months. That amount of ink usually takes years. YEARS. His pain tolerance was impressive, but even more impressive was his sense of, well, willpower, for lack of a better word. I could see the sweat popping out on his skin and hear his teeth squeaking, and yet he'd hold on, he'd bear through the pain long after any reasonable person would have told me to stop.
It was beautiful. In the end, I was beyond impressed with how it had turned out. He'd joked that he never wanted to see A&D ointment again, and I asked if he'd bought stock. That had gotten a real laugh out of him. "I should have," he said. It was the only time I'd ever heard him really laugh, rather than chuckle politely.
And when he walked out of my shop for the last time, I stood at the door and watched him go. I figured I would never see him again…he'd said he couldn't imagine getting more ink.
But I did see him again, on the news. The tattoos got very little airtime; only the slightest ink was visible on his mug shot, and it could have been mistaken for shadows.
I wondered about him; he'd gotten that tattoo, walked out of my shop, and the next day, he'd robbed a bank. He didn't seem the type, but then again…well, he didn't seem the type to spend so much time in my shop either.
Guess he's not really a type.